In scanning through the best performing funds year- to-date in ETF land, but excluding leveraged longs for obvious reasons, we see an ETF that is not likely well known but has been slowly attracting assets nonetheless.

CNXT (Market Vectors ChinaAMC SME-ChiNext ETF, Expense Ratio 0.68%) debuted in late July of last year, and has grown to about $68.6 million in assets under management.

CNXT interestingly is borrowing its symbol from a former Internet Bubble age tech high-flier, Conexant Systems, which is of course no longer a listed company. In spite of the not so obvious fund title in identifying the investment strategy, this ETF is classified in the “China Equity” category, and from a market cap standpoint is a “Mid-Cap” fund.

It tracks the SME-ChiNext 100 Index and according to fund literature is “Intended to track the performance of the 100 largest and most liquid stocks listed and trading on the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Board and the ChiNext Board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. A-Shares are companies incorporated in China that trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, are quoted in Renminbi (RMB), and are only available to domestic Chinese investors, Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFIIs), and Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFIIs).”

Since the exposure is to Chinese Mid-Caps, most of the holdings including some of the top weightings are likely not well known to most, as we see the top five names as Suning Appliance Co Ltd (3.64% weighting), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology C (2.78%), East Money Information Co Ltd (2.43%), Leshi Internet Information & Technology (2.33%), and Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration (2.05%).